A Spot of Bother (17 page)

54

At four o’clock
the following day Katie made the mistake of saying to Jacob, “Well, buddy, half an hour and we’ll head back to London.”

Cue tears and high-volume wailing.

“I hate you.”

“Jacob…”

She tried talking him down but he was winding up for a big one. So she put him in the living room and closed the door and said he could come out when he’d calmed down.

Mum caved almost immediately and went in, saying, “Don’t be mean to him.” Two minutes later he was eating Maltesers in the kitchen.

What was it with grandparents? Thirty years ago it was smacking and bed with no tea. Now it was second helpings of pudding and toys on the dining table.

She packed the car and said goodbye to Dad. When she told him Mum was going to the doctor he looked petrified but she’d run out of sympathy several hours back. She kissed him on the forehead and closed the bedroom door quietly behind her.

She manhandled a thrashing Jacob into the car and
Hey presto,
as soon as he knew resistance was futile he slumped backward, silent and exhausted.

Two and a half hours later they pulled up outside the house. The hall light was on and the curtains were closed. Ray was there. Or had been.

Jacob was in a coma, so she lifted him out of his seat and carried him to the front door. The hallway was silent. She hefted him upstairs and laid him down on his bed. Maybe he’d sleep through. If Ray was lurking she didn’t want an argument while ministering to a waking child. She slipped his shoes and trousers off and put the duvet over him.

She heard a noise and went back downstairs.

Ray appeared in the hallway carrying the blue holdall and Jacob’s Spider-Man rucksack from the car. He paused, briefly, looked up, said, “Sorry,” then took everything through to the kitchen.

He meant it. She could see. There was something broken about him. She realized how rarely she ever heard someone say sorry and mean it.

She followed him and sat down on the opposite side of the table.

“I shouldn’t have done that.” He was nudging a ballpoint pen round in little circles with his finger. “Running off. It was stupid. You should be able to go out for coffee with who you like. It’s none of my business.”

“It is your business,” said Katie. “And I would have told you—”

“But I would have been jealous. I know. Look…I’m not blaming you for anything…”

Her anger had vanished. She realized that he was more honest and more self-aware than any member of her own family. How had she not seen this before?

She touched his hand. He didn’t respond.

“You said you couldn’t marry someone who treated you like that.”

“I was angry,” said Katie.

“Yeh, but you were right,” said Ray. “You can’t marry someone who treats you like that.”

“Ray—”

“Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the last few days.” He paused, briefly. “You shouldn’t be marrying me.”

She tried to interrupt but he held up his hand.

“I’m not the right person for you. Your parents don’t like me. Your brother doesn’t like me—”

“They don’t know you.” Those three days alone in the house she’d been glad of the space and the quiet. Now she could see him walking out for a second time and it terrified her. “Anyway, it’s got nothing to do with them.”

He narrowed his eyes a little while she was talking, letting it wash over him like the pain from a headache. “I’m not as clever as you. I’m not good with people. We don’t like the same music. We don’t like the same books. We don’t like the same films.”

It was true. But it was all wrong.

“You get angry and I don’t know what to say. And, sure, we get along OK. And I like looking after Jacob. But…I don’t know…In a year’s time, in two years’ time, in three years’ time—”

“Ray, this is ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” she said.

He looked directly at her. “You don’t really love me, do you?”

Katie said nothing.

He carried on looking at her. “Go on, say it. Say, ‘I love you.’”

She couldn’t do it.

“You see, I love you. And that’s the problem.”

The central heating clicked on.

Ray got to his feet. “I need to go to bed.”

“It’s only eight o’clock.”

“I haven’t slept for the past few days. Not properly…Sorry.”

He went upstairs.

She looked around the room. For the first time since she and Jacob had moved in she could see it for what it was. Someone else’s kitchen with a few of their belongings pasted onto it. The microwave. The enamel bread bin. Jacob’s alphabet train.

Ray was right. She couldn’t say it. She hadn’t said it for a long time now.

Except that it was wrong, putting it like that.

There was an answer, somewhere. An answer to everything Ray had said which didn’t make her feel selfish and stupid and mean-spirited. It was out there. If only she could see it.

She took hold of the ballpoint pen Ray had been playing with and lined it up with the grain of the tabletop. Maybe if she could place it with absolute accuracy her life wouldn’t fall apart.

She had to do something. But what? Unpack the bags? Eat supper? It all seemed suddenly pointless.

She went to the sideboard. Three plane tickets for Barcelona were sitting in the toast rack. She opened the drawer and took out the invitations and the envelopes, the guest list and the list of presents. She took out the photocopied maps and hotel recommendations and the books of stamps. She carried it all to the table. She wrote names at the top of all the invitations and put them into the envelopes with the folded sheets of A4. She sealed them and stamped them and arranged them in three neat white pagodas.

When they were done she grabbed the house keys and took the envelopes to the end of the road and posted them, not knowing whether she was trying to make everything come out right by positive thinking, or whether she was punishing herself for not loving Ray enough.

55

Jean booked an appointment
and drove George to the surgery after school.

It was not something she was looking forward to. But Katie was right. It was best to take the bull by the horns.

In the event he proved surprisingly malleable.

She put him through his paces in the car. He was to tell Dr. Barghoutian the truth. None of this nonsense about sunstroke or coming over light-headed. He was not to leave until Dr. Barghoutian had promised to do something. And he was to tell her afterward exactly what Dr. Barghoutian had said.

She reminded him that Katie’s wedding was coming up and that if he wasn’t there to give his daughter away and make a speech then he was going to have some explaining to do.

He seemed to enjoy the bullying in some perverse way and promised to do everything she asked.

They sat next to one another in the waiting room. She tried to chat. About the Indian architect who had moved in across the road. About cutting the wisteria down before it got under the roof. But he was more interested in an elderly copy of
OK
magazine.

When his name was called she patted him gently on the leg to wish him luck. He made his way across the room, stooping a little and keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the carpet.

She tried a bit of her P. D. James but couldn’t get into it. She’d never liked doctors’ waiting rooms. Everyone always looked so shabby. As if they hadn’t been taking enough care of themselves, which they probably hadn’t. Hospitals weren’t so bad. So long as they were clean. White paint and clean lines. People being properly ill.

She couldn’t leave George. What she felt was irrelevant. She had to think about George. She had to think about Katie. She had to think about Jamie.

Yet when she imagined not leaving him, when she imagined saying no to David, it was like a light at the end of a dark tunnel going out.

She picked up George’s
OK
magazine and read about the Queen Mother’s hundredth birthday.

Ten minutes later George emerged.

“Well?” she asked.

“Can we go to the car?”

They went to the car.

Dr. Barghoutian had given him a prescription for antidepressants and booked him in to see the clinical psychologist the following week. Whatever the two of them had talked about it had clearly exhausted him. She decided not to pry.

They went to the chemist’s. He didn’t want to go inside, mumbling something she couldn’t quite catch about “books on diseases,” so she went in herself and picked up some brussels and carrots from the grocer’s next door while they were doing the prescription.

He opened the bag as they were driving home and spent a great deal of time examining the bottle. Whether he was horrified or relieved she couldn’t tell. Back in the kitchen she took charge of it, watched him swallow the first pill with a glass of water, then put the remainder in the cupboard above the toaster.

He said, “Thank you,” and retreated to the bedroom.

She hung up the washing, made a coffee, filled in the check and the order form for the marquee people, then said she had to pop out to talk to the florist.

She drove over to David’s house and tried to explain how impossible the decision was. He apologized for having made the offer at such a difficult time. She told him not to apologize. He told her that nothing had changed, and that he would wait for as long as she needed.

He put his arms round her and they held one another and it was like coming home after a long and difficult journey and she realized that this was something she could never give up.

56

Jamie was drinking
a cappuccino on Greek Street waiting for Ryan.

He wasn’t being entirely honorable, Ryan being Tony’s ex. He knew that. But Ryan had agreed to come, so Ryan wasn’t being entirely honorable, either.

Fuck it. What was honor anyway? The only person he knew with real integrity was Maggie and she had spent her life since college picking up nasty diseases in flyblown corners of West Africa. Didn’t even own furniture.

Besides, Tony had dumped him. If something happened with Ryan, what was wrong with that?

Fifteen minutes late.

Jamie got himself a second coffee and reopened Daniel Dennett’s
Consciousness Explained
which he’d bought in one of his periodic fits of self-improvement (the exercise ball, that stupid opera CD…). At home he was reading
Pet Sematary,
but reading that in public was like leaving the house in your underwear.

This does not mean that the brain never uses “buffer memories” to cushion the interface between the brain’s internal processes and the asynchronous outside world. The “echoic memory” with which we preserve stimulus patterns briefly while the brain begins to process them is an obvious example (Sperling, 1960; Neisser, 1967; see also Newell, Rosenbloom, and Laird, 1989, p. 1067).

There was a review on the back from
The New York Review of Books
which described it as “clear and funny.”

On the other hand, he didn’t want to look like someone who was having difficulty reading
Consciousness Explained
. So he let his eyes drift over the pages, turning them every couple of minutes.

He thought about the new Web site and wondered whether the background music had been a mistake. He remembered last year’s trip to Edinburgh. That purr of tires on the cobbles outside the hotel. He wondered why no one used them these days. Ambulances and wheelchairs, probably. He imagined Ryan placing his hand very briefly on his thigh and saying, “I’m so glad you got in touch.”

Twenty-five minutes late. Jamie was beginning to feel obtrusive.

He gathered his belongings and bought a
Telegraph
from the newsagent on the corner. He bought a pint of lager in the pub over the road, then found an empty table on the pavement from which he could keep an eye on the café.

Three minutes later a man wearing leather trousers and a white T-shirt slid onto the bench on the other side of the table. He put a motorcycle helmet down on the table, mimed a little gun with his right hand, pointed the barrel at Jamie’s head, cocked his thumb, made a clicking noise and said, “Estate agent.”

Jamie was a little disturbed by this.

“Lowe and Carter,” said the man.

“Er, yeh,” said Jamie.

“Courier. We’re in the building across the street. Pick up stuff from your place every now and then. You’ve got a desk in the far corner by the big window.” He held out his hand to be shaken. “Mike.”

Jamie shook it. “Jamie.”

Mike picked up
Consciousness Explained,
which Jamie had left on the table where it could give a general impression without needing to be physically read. There was a thick Celtic band tattooed around Mike’s upper right arm. He examined the book briefly then put it down. “A masterful tapestry of deep insight.”

Jamie wondered whether the man was psychiatrically ill.

Mike laughed quietly. “Read it off the back cover.”

Jamie turned the book over to verify this.

Mike sipped his drink. “I like courtroom dramas myself.”

For a second Jamie wondered whether Mike meant he liked doing things that resulted in him going to court.

“John Grisham, that kind of stuff,” said Mike.

Jamie relaxed a little. “Having a bit of trouble with the book myself, to be honest.”

“Been stood up?” Mike asked.

“No.”

“I saw you sitting across the road.”

“Well…Yeh.”

“Boyfriend?” asked Mike.

“Ex-boyfriend’s ex-boyfriend.”

“Messy.”

“You’re probably right,” agreed Jamie.

Glancing over Mike’s shoulder, he saw Ryan standing outside the café, looking up and down the street. He seemed balder than Jamie remembered. He was wearing a beige raincoat and carrying a little blue rucksack.

Jamie turned away.

“Tell me a secret,” said Mike. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”

“When I was six my friend, Matthew, bet me I wouldn’t pee in this flowerpot in my sister’s bedroom.”

“And you peed in the flowerpot.”

“I peed in the flowerpot.” Out of the corner of his eye Jamie saw Ryan shake his head and begin walking off toward Soho Square. “I guess it’s not a secret, technically, because she found out. I mean, it smelt really bad after a few days.” Ryan was gone. Jamie relaxed a little. “I had this little plastic guitar I’d got on holiday in Portugal. She burnt it. In the garden. But it burnt, like, amazingly well. I mean, Portugal probably didn’t do Trading Standards in 1980. I remember this scream and the sound of strings snapping. She’s still got this scar on her arm.”

His parents would look at Mike and assume he stole cars. The razor cut, the five earrings. But this…this thing passing between them, this nameless charge you could feel in the air…it made everything else seem shallow and stupid.

Mike held his eye and said, “You hungry?” and seemed to mean at least three things.

They went to a little Thai restaurant on Greek Street.

“I used to do tiling. Upmarket stuff. Fired Earth. Marble. Slate. Kitchens. Fireplaces. The bike’s for money. Get me through the Alexander Technique and massage courses. Then I’m going freelance. Make some money so I can move back up north so I can afford a place with a consulting room.”

A fine drizzle was falling in the street. Jamie was three pints down and the lights reflecting off the wet vehicles were tiny stars.

“Actually,” said Jamie, “the thing I like best about Amsterdam…well, the whole of Holland, actually, is…there are these amazing modern buildings everywhere. Over here people just build the cheapest thing possible.”

Jamie was a bit vague about Alexander Technique. He couldn’t really imagine Mike doing any kind of therapy. Too much swagger. But every so often Mike would touch Jamie’s hand with a couple of fingers or look at him and smile and say nothing and there was a softness there which seemed sexier for being so well hidden the rest of the time.

Nice arms, too. Little ridges of flesh over the veins, without being wiry. And strong hands.

The massage. He could imagine that.

Mike suggested they go to a club. But Jamie didn’t want to share him. He looked at the salt cellar and steeled himself and asked if Mike wanted to come back to his place and felt, as he always did, that little lurch, half thrill, half panic. Like the parachute jump. But better.

“Is this, like, an estate agent’s dream pad? Steel balcony? Island kitchen with granite work surface? Arne Jacobsen chairs?”

“Victorian terrace with a white sofa and a Habitat coffee table,” said Jamie. “And how do you know about Arne Jacobsen chairs?”

“I’ve been in some very nice houses in my time, thank you very much.”

“Business or pleasure?” asked Jamie.

“A little bit of both.”

“So, was that a yes, or are you keeping me in suspense?”

“Let’s catch a tube,” said Mike.

They watched their reflections in the black glass opposite as the carriage rumbled through Tufnell Park and Archway, their legs touching and the electricity flowing back and forth, other passengers getting on and off oblivious, Jamie aching to be held, yet wanting the journey to last for hours in case what came later didn’t match up to what he was picturing in his head.

Two Mormons got onto the train and sat in the two seats facing them. Black suits. Sensible haircuts. The little plastic name badges.

Mike leant close to Jamie’s ear and said, “I want to fuck your mouth.”

They were still laughing when they stumbled through the front door of the flat.

Mike pushed Jamie against the wall and kissed him. Jamie could feel Mike’s cock hard inside his jeans. He slid his hands inside Mike’s T-shirt and saw, through the living-room door, a tiny red light blinking.

“Hang on.”

“What?”

“Answerphone.”

Mike laughed. “Thirty seconds. Then I’m coming to get you.”

“There’s some beer in the fridge,” said Jamie. “Vodka and other stuff’s in the cupboard by the window.”

Mike detached himself. “Fancy a spliff?”

“Sure.”

Jamie went into the living room and pressed the button.

“Jamie. Hi. It’s Katie.” She was drunk. Or did she just sound drunk because Jamie was drunk? “Shit. You’re not in, are you. Shit.”

She wasn’t drunk. She was crying. Bloody hell.

“Anyway…today’s exciting news is that the wedding’s off. Because Ray doesn’t think we should get married.”

Was this good or bad? It was like seeing the adjacent train start to move. It made him feel a little wobbly.

“Oh, and we went home for the weekend and Dad’s in bed because he’s having a nervous breakdown. I mean a real one, like, with panic attacks and nightmares about dying and everything. And Mum’s thinking of leaving him for that bloke from the office.”

Jamie’s first thought was that Katie herself was having some kind of breakdown.

“So, I thought I’d better ring you because the way things have been going over the last few days you’ve probably been involved in some truly hideous road accident and the reason you’re not answering your phone is because you’re in hospital, or dead, or you’ve left the country or something…Give me a ring, OK?”

Beep.

Jamie sat for a moment, letting it sink in, or drift away, or whatever it was going to do. Then he stood up and made his way to the kitchen.

Mike was lighting a joint from the gas stove. He stood up, took a drag and held the smoke down with the obligatory startled expression. He looked a bit like Jamie felt.

Mike breathed out. “Want some?”

There was going to be some ghastly scene, wasn’t there. You drag someone halfway up the Northern Line for sex which doesn’t happen and suddenly you’ve got a disappointed and muscular stranger in the house who no longer has any reasons to be nice to you.

He wondered if Mike had ever stolen a car.

“What’s up?” asked Mike.

“Family trouble.”

“Big?”

“Yup,” said Jamie.

“Death?” Mike took a saucer off the draining board and laid the joint on the rim.

“No.” Jamie sat down. “Not unless my sister kills her fiancé. Or my father kills himself. Or my father kills my mother’s lover.”

Mike leaned down and took hold of Jamie’s arm. Jamie was right. They were surprisingly strong hands.

Mike eased Jamie to his feet. “In my professional opinion…you need something to take your mind off things.” Mike pulled him close. His cock was still hard.

For a brief second Jamie imagined Katie’s drunken prophecy coming true. An unseemly struggle. Jamie slipping and cracking his skull on the corner of the kitchen table.

He pulled away. “Hang on. This is not a good time.”

Mike put a hand around the back of Jamie’s neck. “Trust me. It’ll be good for you.”

Jamie pushed back against Mike’s hand but it didn’t give.

Then Mike’s eyes did the soft thing. “What are you going to do if I go away? Sit here and worry? It’s too late to ring anyone. Come on. A couple of minutes and you won’t be thinking about anything outside this room. I guarantee it.”

And again it was like the parachute jump. But even more so. The fog of alcohol cleared briefly and it occurred to Jamie that this was why Tony had left. Because Jamie always wanted to be in control. Because he was frightened of anything different or improper. And as the fog closed over again it seemed to Jamie that he had to have sex with this man to prove to Tony that he could change.

He let Mike pull him close.

They kissed again.

He put his hands around Mike’s back.

It was good to be held.

He could feel something thawing and cracking, something which had imprisoned him for far too long. Mike was right. He could let go, leave other people to sort out their own problems. For once in his life he could live in the moment.

Mike slid his hand down to Jamie’s crotch and Jamie felt his cock stiffen. Mike popped open the button and pushed down the top of his boxer shorts and wrapped Jamie’s cock in his hand.

“Feeling better?” asked Mike.

“Uh-huh.”

With his free hand, Mike offered Jamie the joint. They took a drag each and Mike put it back down on the saucer.

“Suck me,” said Mike.

And it was at this point that Mike’s eyes did something entirely different. He let go of Jamie’s cock and seemed to be staring at an object several miles behind Jamie’s head.

“Shit,” said Mike.

“What?” asked Jamie.

“My eyes.”

“What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“I can’t…” Mike shook his head. He was starting to sweat, little beads of perspiration standing out on his forehead, on his arms. “Shit. I can’t see anything properly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I can’t see anything properly.” Mike staggered sideways and slumped onto a chair.

Katie was right. It was just going to happen a different way. It was Mike who was going to have the seizure. An ambulance would come. He wouldn’t have a clue about Mike’s name or address…

Christ. The joint. Was it OK to bury a joint in the garden while someone was having a seizure? What if Mike choked on his tongue while Jamie was outside?

Mike doubled over. “I’ve gone blind. Jesus. My stomach.”

His
stomach
?

“Those bloody prawns.”

“What?” asked Jamie, who was beginning to wonder, for the second time that evening, whether Mike had some kind of mental problem.

“It’s OK,” said Mike. “It’s happened before.”

“What has?”

“Get me a bowl.”

Jamie’s brain was so full he took a couple of seconds working out what kind of bowl Mike meant. By the time he’d worked it out, Mike had vomited onto the floor in front of his chair.

“Oh crap,” said Mike.